Mobile Network Comparison

For-profit giving service JustGiving has redeemed itself a little by working with :Vodafone: to launch “the UK’s first free text donation service” called JustTextGiving. And about time too – in the past, mobile networks frequently scraped off huge percentages of donations to charity in service fees making the whole altruistic giving aspect a bit of a farce. Already, twenty one charities, including Cancer Research UK and the Anthony Nolan Trust, have signed up, but all of the Britain’s 184,000 charities can register to use their personalised six-character shortcodes or VICs (Vodafone Individual Code).

The service charges no set-up or running costs for charities, there are no network charges for people making donations. This means that and charities receive 100% of the amount donated (plus Gift Aid if applicable).

Vodafone is already supporting over 1,000 UK charities through its World of Difference programme. It is also investing £5 million to provide support for charities in publicising their new codes with an online pack offering free marketing materials and advice.

It’s just a shame that JustGiving make money off other people’s donations in their regular service while Vodafone make money off oppressive dictators and rip-off UK taxpayers.

Still, let’s hope that JustTextGiving takes off.

Continue Reading

Giffgaff has finally made one of its most popular and certainly one of its best value “goodybags” permanent after trialling it for several months. The cutely-named Hokey Cokey costs only £5 a month and comes with a veritable truckload of benefits.

The Hokey Cokey has long been Giffgaff’s second most popular goodybag but they have delayed making it a permanent feature since it was first introduced in December 2010. Now they have made the Hokey Cokey into a full-time goodybag they’ve temporarily ceased the experimental “Giffagff Labs” goodybags while they work on bringing full Blackberry support. Hopefully new Labs goodybags will soon return to Giffgaff providing even better value.

In the meantime, customers can benefit from probably the best £5 monthly offer available in the UK. For just £5, Giffgaff users get 60 any-network UK minutes and 300 texts. This alone is worth £16.80 on Giffgaff or about £42 on most other PAYG networks.

But the special thing about the Hokey Cokey goodybag is that for every minute you get called, you get one extra minute absolutely free! This means that if your mates call you for a couple of hours during the month, you automatically get your allowance bumped up to 180 minutes of calls a month for just £5. And you still have the SMS allowance too.

We’re thrilled this incredible value deal is now always available with Giffgaff especially as we can offer Giffgaff SIMs with £5 free credit to get you started.

Continue Reading

The latest mobile network to massively raise their PAYG fees is Vodafone. They’ve hiked their PAYG rates up to 20% in response to the recent Ofcom reduction in mobile termination rates. The changes kick in on 14th July.

This is part of a recent trend that has seen 3 tack on a ridiculous charge for delivery reports on 6 June while ASDA Mobile’s rates shot up by up to 50% on 1 June and Orange also increased their PAYG fees substantially on 1 July. Even Virgin Mobile will massively increase their out of tariff prices on 25th July. It won’t be surprising to see other networks follow suit shortly.

Vodafone have gone from one of the cheaper main mobile networks to amongst the most expensive. Their new rates now look like this:

• Voice call charges have increased by a mighty 19% from 21p/minute to 25p/minute. This applies for all outgoing calls to UK mobiles and UK landlines. The minimum call charge has also risen to 25p. This means you’ll be charged 25p for all calls you make event hose that are shorter than one minute.
• The voicemail charge has risen from 20p/minute to 25p/minute.
• Texts have gone up from 10p to 12p per message so the cost for every UK SMS is a whole 20% greater.
• The price for sending MMS picture messages has leapt to 36p each.
• Premium rate 09 numbers are now an outrageous £2/minute, a massive 300% increase from the old 50p/minute price.
• Mobile data has gone up from £1/day to £1/25MB/day with a maximum charge of £5/day.

To see how this affects the prices compared to other networks, feel free to check out our comprehensive comparison chart. After this price change, Vodafone are now tied with Orange, T-Mobile and O₂ for the most expensive texts in the UK and only 3, Tru and Virgin Mobile charge more for calls. In fact, this means that Vodafone now charge over 3x as much as budget networks such as Giffgaff.

In fact, as an example, an average customer who usually makes about 40 minutes of calls, sends 150 texts every month will see their bill shoot up from £23.40 to £28.00. This is an increase of £4.60 or 19.7% which is pretty substantial. Of course, if you often use more than 25MB of data in a day (a few YouTube videos can easily reach this much), use picture messages or often make short sub-minute calls, you’ll be hit even harder.

Because of this, existing Vodafone customers will probably be very tempted to switch to a budget network like Giffgaff, ASDA Mobile or Tesco Mobile. You should read our guides to getting your PAC and porting your number if you want to quit Vodafone after this price rise.

Continue Reading